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When it comes to Bob Dylan, I’m a completist. I’ve got all the official albums, and whenever he releases a new one, however awful it is, I know I’ll be parting with my money. Same with Van Morrison. I’ve been invested in his records for so long it’s too late to stop now.

Of course compared to many here I’m a complete lightweight. I’ve never bothered with bootlegs, and even with the Official Bootleg series I’ve restricted myself to the 2CD sets rather than the big shiny box sets. But still, that collection from ‘Bob Dylan’ to ‘Trouble No More’continues to give me a lot of pleasure.

Except there’s been a big Christmas shaped hole in the middle of it. For some reason I’ve never been able to bring myself to buy ‘Christmas in the Heart’. Until today. I finally cracked in HMV today – at £3.99 it would have been rude not to. I listened on the drive home from work. And what a gloriously funny, barmy, joyous record it is. When I wasn’t singing along at the top of my voice (even less tunefully than Bob it has to be said) I was grinning from ear to ear. » Continue Reading.

Anyone read the winner or any of the rest of the shortlist? Anyone care?

I used to religiously read the shortlist and discovered many fantastic writers and novels (and some duds) as a result. But the balance of good v bad seemed to shift in more recent years and I lost interest. Picked up the thread again last year and read five of the six, but ye gods….

This year’s list hasn’t interested me in the least to date, with the one exception, as it happens, of the winner, Lincoln in the Bardo which I read a review of when it first came out and thought it sounded interesting. Will give that a go at some point but not sure about the rest of them. And meantime I cannot imagine that any of them are better than Sebastian Barry’s unbelievably great ‘Days Without End’ which unaccountably didn’t even make the list.

It’s early days but I’m really enjoying Neil Finn’s new record Out of Silence, as I did his last, very different, album Dizzy Heights. It was recorded in various sessions put out live on Facebook (the films are all online) but the record stands up on its own beyond the notion of that particular experiment . It’s darker and more sombre than much of his best known output, both in lyrics and in the largely piano and orchestral arrangements. Maybe that’s a function of age – he’s 60 next year – maybe just the subject matter he has taken on, including the Bataclan murders in Terrorise Me. But it’s beautiful in a largely minor key, understated way.

I’ve dipped in and out of Crowded House and Finn brothers’ solo material. But the more I listen the more I think that there are very few songwriters since the 60s who can match his unerring ear and ability to write wonderful melodies. The comparison with Paul McCartney has been made so many times it’s become a cliche, but you can see why. He shares with McCartney and a few others like Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, Carole King, an apparently effortless ability to » Continue Reading.

This month I have a significant birthday. Over the last few weeks I have been creating a playlist of 60 tracks for my 60 years – songs which in one way or another have been important for me. Some have particular memories; some are simply tracks I love. I’d got to 60 although it’s a work in progress – there are plenty on there I’m not sure about and many I am sure I have missed. But last night I added this as a 61st. Marie Courtney Andrews’ ‘Honest Life’ is the most recent record I’ve bought and I’ve been playing it a lot these last few weeks. She’s 26, my daughters’ generation. It must be hard to be original at that age, certainly if you’re ploughing a country singer-songwriter furrow. Listening to the album I can hear echoes of plenty of older artists who are either on my playlist or could be – Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne, Nanci Griffith. So there’s nothing especially new here.

Except that nobody has written these exact words before, and set them to this particular melody, and sung them in this particular way, and set them to these particular » Continue Reading.

For anyone interested in Randy Newman I heartily recommend the first part of a two part interview on Radio 2; part two still to come. I could listen to him talk and play his songs at the piano all day. And, oh my, what songs. More than any other songwriter I can think of I find his songs sound better and better the older I get. The new album sounds promising too.

Mardi Gras was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s final album. After 4 years of magnificent music making across six albums, the band was falling apart. Creedence had always been one brilliant control freak with an average, workmanlike three man rhythm section. John Fogerty was songwriter, lead singer, lead guitarist, provider of keyboards saxophone or any other additional instrument, producer and arranger. The others had a fraction of his talent, and none of the say. By 1972 they’d had enough. Brother Tom Fogerty had left. And Doug Clifford and Stu Cook wanted more input. So in an action of artistic suicide Fogerty gave it to them. They wrote and sang three songs each. Clifford’s were bearable but completely undistinguished. Cook’s were just awful. And Fogerty was clearly exhausted, pissed off, and, for the first time, simply didn’t care. The one positive note is that the album has one genuine Fogerty classic, the last song on their last album, Someday Never Comes.

In his corroscating Rolling Stone review Jon Landau described it as ‘relative to a group’s established level of performance, the worst album I have ever heard from a major rock band’. He may well have been right. But this was 45 years » Continue Reading.

I was looking up Duke Ellington on The Allmusic site this evening and noticed that they baldly and unequivocally describe him as set out in the heading to this post.

Are they right? The word ‘all-round’ is important here I guess in that I’m not sure exactly what it means but it feels like a qualification and a caveat. I think it means that he was able to work in the genre of jazz but take it across into classical, film music and widespread acceptance- thus he had an ‘all-round’ impact second to none. But I’m not sure. Take it out and leave just ‘greatest musical figure of the 20th century’ and he may still be a contender, I suppose. But I’d plump for Shostakovich, for my money the greatest and most fascinating ‘classical’ composer of the century. Paul McCartney is also a clear candidate. Any others?

I don’t know enough about public opinion in Scotland to know if Nicola Sturgeon’s commitment to a second independence referendum is a brilliant political move or a major error. People could very easily turn against her call, seeing it (as May has tried to present it) as putting political opportunism above the national interest. But if the majority of Scots are pro EU they may well see it as a smart move to apply more pressure on the government to step back from a hard Brexit and to win concessions for Scotland.

One thing has become clear in the last week – the interventions most likely to cause real problems for the government in the next couple of years are going to come from the SNP, or the Tory’s own ranks but not from Her Majesty’s official Opposition.

Laura Marling’s sixth album has women at its centre. The word ‘he’ doesn’t appear at all; almost every song features a woman as its subject. The ‘she’ of these songs could be lovers, friends, rivals, mothers, women seen from afar, the singer herself. The songs constantly move between first and third person, and they may be the same person, or they may not.

The title Semper Femina is Latin for ‘always a woman’. She is at different times strong, vulnerable, suffering a broken love affair, feeling the rejection of a friend, taking inspiration from another woman, worrying about the planet, worrying that she is doomed to repeat the same mistakes throughout her life. She is ‘fickle and changeable’, but Marling takes that phrase from the classical Roman poet Virgil and defiantly co-opts it as a slogan for life:

You’ll be anything you choose/ Fickle and changeable are you/ And long may that continue.

Time and again Marling shows the ability of a short story writer to create a whole character, or situation in one or two lines

I know we’ve done live albums on more than one occasion before, but still, it’s a rich vein.

I was listening to Van Morrison’s It’s Too Late To Stop Now, Vols II, III and IV yesterday and marvelling at what a remarkable record it is. And the arrangements really make it. There are eleven people onstage including Morrison, and every part has its own lines, distinctive and clear. Strings are invariably used on rock records to provide a gloopy background, but here the quartet has a real role to play with lead lines and melodies enhancing the songs throughout. Ditto the two brass instruments which are never just reinforcing noise. Jeff Labes’ keyboard and John Platania’s guitar weave in and out with the texture of a jazz ensemble.

The playing is fantastic, and, above it all, Van’s vocals magnificent as he goes from bullhorn to whisper and back again in a stroke. What you hear is the essence of all great live albums – musicians feeding off each other, off the audience, and off the moment in a way that can never be created in the studio.

I was thirteen when The Yes Album came out, but I only really became aware of it, and the band, a year or two later when all of my mates suddenly seemed to be listening to Yes, ELP, Genesis et al. I remember being dragged along to see them around the time of Tales of Topographic Oceans. However I don’t think I have ever knowingly heard a Yes record all the way through. As far as I was concerned in the 70s Yes were the acme of pompous prog rock with its classical pretensions and sub Tolkein and Lewis Carroll lyrics. Needless to say, the fact that I had never listened to them properly was no impediment to my trenchantly holding this view.

Anyway in recent years I have occasionally scoured the Spotify vaults to catch up with ‘classic’ albums and artists which have somehow eluded me thus far. Tonight it has been the Yes Album. And bugger me if it isn’t a much much more enjoyable listen than I expected.

There are only six tracks, but there is far less endless keyboard nonsense than I expected (maybe that came later with Rick Wakeman?). » Continue Reading.

I’m with Tiggs – keep the main poll to newly released material only. So let’s start a poll on other stuff – ‘historic’ re-releases, live albums, archive material etc etc. No idea about the points scoring system and obviously Bob or Kate will win, but go for it….

Saw Paul Simon in Manchester tonight, and he was magnificent. Fantastic band, and an unbelievable set of songs from every stage of his career. But it was the final number which will stay with me for a long time. Seems he’s been finishing the set most nights with Sound of Silence, but tonight he stood alone at the mic with his acoustic guitar and played ‘American Tune’. He didn’t say anything about it, and he didn’t mention Trump all evening, but this was as eloquent an expression of the times his country is going through as I’ve heard these last 48 hours. You could have heard a pin drop.

And I don’t know a soulwho’s not been battered/ I don’t have a friend who feels at ease/ I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered/ Or driven to its knees./ But it’s alright, It’s alright,/ We’ve lived along so well/ Still when I think of the road we’re travelling on/ I wonder what went wrong/ I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

This record pretty much follows the template of Eric’s solo records on the 70s;

A few old blues standards by the likes of Robert Johnson and Skip James – check

A handful of pleasant but insipid self penned tunes – check

A JJ Cale song or two – check

A song or two by esteemed peers (Paul Brady and Bob Dylan here) – check

There are also a couple of songs from the thirties which frankly the album would be better without.

Listen, there isn’t anything earth shattering here, and if you don’t own any Clapton records there really wouldn’t be much point buying this over, say, 461 Ocean Boulevard or There’s One in Every Crowd. But, do you know, I’m really enjoying it. At least Clapton sounds as if he’s really made an effect here. His voice and playing are in good shape, he has Glyn Johns behind the desk, the artwork is pretty handsome and includes a portrait of EC by Peter Blake, and the band is terrific. He has brought in the likes of Henry Spinetti, Paul Carrack, Chris Stainton, and Andy Fairweather-Low. Were Carlsberg to do a ‘We don’t do » Continue Reading.

My Discover Spotify playlist threw this one up this week. Its rather lovely. Generally though I prefer Randy Newman’s great, great songs sung by the master himself, because only he can fully bring out the pathos, the wierdness, the irony or the satire in his lyrics.

I reckon he’s done alright from the royalties from covers of his songs though. Which are the best of them? Post away….

This may seem somewhat trivial compared to his other crimes against decency and respect for others, but, bloody hell, seeing Donald Trump use Free’s ‘Alright Now’ and The Stones ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ (though perhaps there’s a message there?) as he bounds up to the podium on his election rallies is thoroughly nausea-inducing. Other past or present examples?

I heard today that my Uncle Jack has died. He was 87. I had a letter from his widow to tell me that he simply went to bed one night and didn’t wake up. It was a perfect way to go, and typical of the man to pass away quietly, without any fuss or drama.

I say it was typical but in truth I didn’t know him at all well. He wasn’t even my uncle. He was a distant cousin of my Dad and they went to University together. A few years later when I came along Mum and Dad asked him to be one of my godparents. After that I would guess I only met him maybe half a dozen times. The most recent was at the funeral of a (real) uncle around three years ago. Before that may have been as long ago as our wedding thirty years ago when he and his wife travelled to join us.

But though I hardly met him, every year, right through my life, I heard from him twice, at Christmas and on my birthday, when I received a card from him. It was always accompanied by a short handwritten letter, asking » Continue Reading.

Manchester was gridlocked. We abandoned the car 2 and a half miles from the stadium and pegged it through the rain, getting there just as he was taking the stage. We took our seats, a mile from the stage. The sound swirled around the arena. The atmosphere was that of a ring road industrial estate. But if anyone can overcome these limitations it is Bruce Springsteen. He did it when I first saw him at Wembley on the Born in the USA tour (though it wasn’t raining then) and over 30 years later he can still do it. How? Well, here’s a few reasons

The songs

He really does have an extraordinary back catalogue. On the European leg of this tour he has abandoned the idea of performing the whole of The River, and the result is that a whole lot of other great material is getting a look in. Of course the trouble with such a rich back catalogue of material is that no one is going to get the set list of their dreams. This concert almost entirely focussed on that extraordinary run between Born to Run and Born in the » Continue Reading.

On her twelfth studio album Lucinda Williams sounds more world weary than ever. That familiar cracked voice is slurred and sorrowful. Her big subject has always been loss – loss of love, loss of passion, loss and memory of childhood, and the incomprehensible loss of loved ones.. They’re all here, but given that both Williams’ and husband and producer Tom Overy’s fathers died recently, it’s hardly surprising that it’s this loss that runs right through the record. The record opens with ‘Dust’ which sets the tone with the first lines – ‘There’a a sadness so deep/The sun seems black’. It’s one of two songs dealing with her father’s Alzheimers – ‘Even your thoughts are dust’. There are songs here in which ‘Death came and gave you his kiss’; in which she begs for the doors of Heaven to open, in which she rails against the disease that afflicted her father – ‘destroyer of brilliance, destroyer of hope/Invader of skin, invader of bone’; in which she asks someone dying to ‘let me know if there’s a heaven out there’.

Good interview here with Lucinda Williams. She’s moving on death (especially the loss of her Dad), funny about sex, and fucking angry about getting old. All of which is exactly as it should be. I don’t know if America has National Treasures but if it does she is surely one of them

Laura Nyro is a name I have always known, but I knew little about her, and so far as I recall had never heard her music. So I put that right today by listening to her early album ‘Eli and the Thirteenth Confession’. If I had any clue about what she would be like I guess I imagined introspective late 60s/early 70s singer- songwriter stuff, but it’s far from it. I certainly didn’t expect exultant funk, soul and gospel overlays, and songwriting of real complexity and originality. If she reminds me of anyone it would be Carol King, but a very left-field Carol King. There are shades of contemporary (Astral Weeks, Moondance) Van Morrison, and even Joanna Newsom, but in a good way. I’m left perplexed as to why, in the era of Joni Mitchell, Carol King, James Taylor and Neil Young she didn’t become a major star.

If like me you don’t know her music I urge you to check her out. And if there are any Laura Nyro fans out there ( and there must be here) I’d love to know more about her music and what you’d suggest I listen to next.

Have only just come across Sir Bob’s most recent foray into taking the shilling for a big commercial company. In this season of goodwill and giving rather than taking, any other rock star ads you’ve enjoyed (or not)?

Woke up last night and couldn’t get back to sleep. Too tired to read,mind too active to sleep. So it was headphones on and iPod on shuffle to see what would turn up. Kind of like when I was a kid under the covers at night going through the radio stations to see what I could find, but under more control. Some tracks lasted a few seconds, some a minute or two. Bruce, Van, Beatles, the Dan, Emmylou, Jackson, Beatles and Stones and many more came and went. And then this. This was the one that hit the spot, lying in the darkness, just the music in my head.